OTTAWA-Canada’s wireless carriers will introduce intercarrier multimedia message services July 1. The initiative will enable customers with MMS-capable mobile phones, regardless of the customers’ wireless service providers, to instantly send and receive messages with rich content to and from MMS-capable phones of friends, family and colleagues.
Sharing MMS messages in Canada currently is limited to customers using the same wireless provider.
The Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association said the country’s four wireless carriers and mobile virtual network operator Virgin Mobile will use an MMS interoperability platform from VeriSign Inc. This solution helps overcome the challenges of exchanging multimedia messages across diverse networks with different technologies and will be managed by VeriSign on an ongoing basis for the carriers.
“The intercarrier agreement enabling all Canadian wireless users to share MMS pictures and video clips is expected to stimulate rapid growth of this exciting phenomenon that heralds true mobile convergence,” stated Lawrence Surtees, director of telecommunications and Internet research at IDC Canada Ltd.
Intercarrier MMS services are just beginning in the United States, with Cingular Wireless L.L.C. and Verizon Wireless, the two largest U.S. carriers, establishing intercarrier MMS services earlier this year. U.S. Cellular began offering MMS services with Verizon Wireless earlier this month.
Canada introduced intercarrier text messaging in spring 2002. Cross-border intercarrier text messaging with the United States followed less than a year later.
“July 1 also marks 20 years to the day when Canada’s first cellular networks were switched on in 1985,” said CWTA President and Chief Executive Officer Peter Barnes. “In just two short decades, Canadians have truly become enamored of all things wireless, and the addition of inter-carrier MMS is just one more example that highlights the scope of wireless services in Canada.”
